


Not the Villain They Think I Am

by DeceitfulHonesty



Series: Who's the Hero Of Your Story? [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Slice of Life, Supervillain AU, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 05:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13563879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeceitfulHonesty/pseuds/DeceitfulHonesty
Summary: Prequel to 'Who's The Hero Of Your Story?'Daisy's life balancing her day job at a coffee shop, fighting three supervillains, and fending off her spy ex-boss is complicated. The last thing she needs is another supervillain to deal with.





	Not the Villain They Think I Am

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a request on tumblr but, let me tell you, I was not expecting it to become the 10,000 words monstrosity it did. Hope you enjoy seeing the beginning of the story from Daisy's point of view!

The obnoxious beeping of the alarm clock jolted Daisy awake far too early. She groaned and pulled a pillow over her head. She had known she would regret staying out late last night when she had to work the next morning, but it was important. 

She slapped a hand down on where she thought the alarm clock was, but her hand just slapped uselessly on the nightstand. She felt around for any sign of the damned contraption, but couldn’t seem to locate it. 

That’s when she remembered she moved it across the room to motivate herself to get out of bed. Daisy groaned again, even louder. She peeked out from under the pillow and saw it on the corner of the dresser. 

She threw out a hand and quaked it, just hard enough to make it shut up. 

It exploded in a pathetic squeak of plastic shrapnel. Great, now she would have to clean that up _and_ buy a new alarm clock. 

She rolled to an upright position. If the alarm had gone off that meant it was about 4 am. Two hours of sleep wasn’t the worst night she’d had, but it wasn’t great either. The sun hadn’t even started to rise over the horizon yet, which made Daisy feel like she hadn’t even slept. 

She yawned and started her daily routine of applying her disguise. 

Everyday that Daisy had to apply the heavy makeup and a wig just to go about her daily life, she regretted not just wearing a mask. All the other famous superheroes wore masks when they ran around their city saving people, why didn’t she?

She rubbed on another layer of black, if only to draw attention from the dark circles under her eyes. Of all the things S.H.I.E.L.D. included in her tactical suit (which she stole when she went AWOL) a mask was not one of them. Once she first went public, there was no going back. 

Honestly, she spent more time in her superhero attire than out of it. The coffee-shop barista persona felt like more of a secret identity than Quake ever did. 

She finished pinning her long, black wig in place and took one last look at herself. Sure, it wasn’t the best secret identity, but no one in the coffee shop ever looked at her long enough to recognize her from her nighttime activities. 

She grabbed her keys and headed out the door, for another long day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“—And a double shot of espresso with a flavor shot of hazelnut, two pumps of caramel, half a pump of almond—”

Daisy’s eyes glazed over halfway through this guy’s order. She zoned out long enough that she missed the last two shots he wanted added to his drink and just punched another two hazelnuts in there. Hopefully the amount of sugar would keep him from noticing the difference.

Once she gave him his total, he held out a pile of gift cards and Daisy had to use every ounce of self-control not to quake him out the window. 

“Daisy, your turn for lunch break,” her manager called. 

“Oh, thank god,” she muttered. She finished swiping the last of the man’s 45 cent gift cards, practically threw the receipt at him, and headed to the back to clock out for her break. 

She flopped into the one rickety table in the break room, plugged in her headphones and unwrapped her sandwich. Once she was comfortably settled, she switched her radio app to the frequency of the police scanners. 

To anyone who walked in, she looked like she was just listening to music on her break. In reality, she was monitoring the city for anything that might need superhero intervention. 

Thankfully, there was nothing yet. Just a few minor traffic offenses, some bickering neighbors that needed to be calmed, and a kid who got his head stuck in a banister. Nothing that the regular cops couldn’t handle. 

It seemed all the major plots and crimes were committed after normal working hours, which Daisy could appreciate. She supposed that the Big Three in this city had to keep up appearances with their work at the university or they would blow their covers (not that most of the city didn’t already know their 'secret identities'). 

Summer and bank holidays were another story, which always sucked because Daisy usually had to work those _and_ juggle time off to stop the bad guys. It was exhausting. 

Daisy’s half hour lunch was up, so she flipped the radio off and headed back into the fray to relieve her coworker. 

The afternoon was much slower. There was a fast food place next door, so very few people came in to the coffee shop to get their lunch. It was great to have some downtime, but it left Daisy leaning on the counter and watching the news on the TV across the room. She was only half listening when a story caught her attention. 

“—Ian Quinn, the city’s biggest philanthropist, announced today that he is setting up a new doctorate program at the university to encourage further education in the sciences,” the anchor said, while a picture of Quinn’s smug face hovered beside her. “The program will focus on biochemical engineering and will be fully funded, so positions will be highly competitive. Reporting from the University—”

Daisy scowled at the news. Her manager was leaning on the other end of the counter watching the story and made a 'how about that' noise. Daisy glanced over at him and raised an eyebrow. 

“You know, with all his money, he could be doing anything he wanted, but he keeps funding scholarships,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah, because he wants to get smart people to do stuff for him,” Daisy scoffed. 

“Come on, how can you hate a guy who’s that good?”

“Because he’s evil?” Daisy countered. 

Her manager scoffed and wandered off, mumbling something about 'crazy millennials thinking everyone with money is evil.'

Daisy rolled her eyes. The half of the population that didn’t know Quinn, Raina, and Garrett were actually the city’s resident super villains were in fierce denial that they could be evil and were convinced that everyone who thought they were was delusional conspiracy theorists. Daisy had long ago given up trying to convince them with words. She just needed to give them actual proof. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy perched on the edge of the rooftop, absentmindedly flipping through all the apps she used to monitor the city on her phone. The police scanner continually rambled staticky codewords into her ears, while she flicked through security feeds of nearly every important building in the city. Nothing had come up yet, so it seemed like it might be a slow night. 

She leaned back and looked down on the towering buildings of downtown. The lights from the windows of people working late in the offices or just getting home to their apartments glittered off the steel frames of each high-rise. 

Daisy yawned and tried to pay attention to what she was supposed to be doing. It was getting hard to keep her eyes open and it was only the beginning of the night. 

The chirp of her text tone interrupted the drawl of the policemen in her ears. She frowned and opened the message. 

It was Coulson.

_There’s a situation in Siberia that we could use you on._

Daisy sighed. Coulson still wasn't willing to accept that she couldn’t leave until she had wrapped things up with the Three. They all seemed to have a personal vendetta against her and she she had yet to work out why, but she needed to stop whatever their overarching world domination plans were first. 

 _I can’t come back yet. Still working,_ Daisy replied. 

_We’re here for backup if you need it._

Daisy smiled and felt tears welling up in her eyes. Even though she had left S.H.I.E.L.D. without explanation, they were still willing to go to bat for her. 

The universe decided to rudely interrupt her reminiscing with a blaring siren from her phone. Daisy quickly flipped through all the security schematics she had up and found the one that was causing the fuss: it was a high-level science research lab on the other side of town. 

Given the amount of security clearance required for that floor and the sensitive information held there, Daisy had a guess on which three people had caused it. 

She groaned and rolled backwards off the ledge. She wound up her headphones and shoved them with her phone and wallet into a small crevice on the roof. She had broken too many phones and lost too many sets of keys in the field to risk bringing them with her again. 

She took a running start and launched herself through the air onto the next rooftop. 

One of the things she most enjoyed about her powers was that she could fly. Well, what she did wasn’t exactly flying, but it was close enough. The wind whipped through her hair and she was surrounded by nothingness. When she felt herself descending, she pushed out another shockwave against the nearest roof below her and shot back into the sky. She tried to be as careful as she could to not damage the roofs she skipped over with her powers. She got enough negative PR as it was, she didn’t need to flatten every rooftop garden in the city as well. 

When she landed on the roof of the lab, however, she didn’t try to muffle it and even sent some extra vibrations through the frame of the building. She wanted them to know she was here and that she was _annoyed._

Was it too much to ask for one night off?

She felt around for the spot that would cause the least amount of damage to the building, quaked a small hole through it, and crashed through the ceiling of the top floor. Now, she just needed to figure out where _they_ were. 

She found the stairs and trudged down a few flights, peeking her head onto each floor to listen for signs of a break in. 

Eventually, from the stairwell, she heard a deep maniacal laugh. 

She audibly groaned. 

Garrett. Great.

Not only was he taking away valuable sleeping time with his incessant talking, but he was the most unstable of the trio and tended to be the most unpredictable. 

Also, encounters with him were the most destructive. 

She charged through the door into the hallway and braced herself to fight. 

“Ah, good. It’s our close friend, Quake,” Garrett said sarcastically. Most of the ceiling lights he had already shot out, so the majority of light was from the blue glow emanating from his cybernetic limbs. His arm-of-the-day wasn’t even a real arm, but just a huge gun that attached to his elbow that crackled with a blue electricity. In his normal hand, he held a box full of paper files. 

“Didn’t picture you to be someone to take out people’s recycling for them,” Daisy quipped gesturing to the box. “I guess it’s not true when they say criminals can’t change.”

“Oh, these. This lab likes to kick it old school and doesn’t keep digital files of their more secret work. It makes it very difficult to get any kind of file transfer, so I figured I’d stop in and pick 'em up myself,” Garrett replied. 

“Are the holes in the walls your way of signing in to the guest book?”

Garrett shrugged. “You know me. Sometimes I just like to break a few things. It’s the fun part of my job.”

Without warning, he raised his gun arm and fired at Daisy. 

The blast caught her off guard and knocked her down the hall while electricity radiated through her body. Daisy grimaced. She could feel her muscles involuntarily twitching for a few moments while she tried to catch her breath. That was a new feature. 

“Like that?” Garrett called from down the hall. “This baby is my new favorite toy.”

“It’s something else,” Daisy hissed through gritted teeth while she pushed herself back to her feet. 

“Well, I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I’ve got to be somewhere with these. Have a lovely night,” Garrett said, his voice dripping with glee at seeing Daisy on the ground. He turned on his heel and strolled down the hall towards the fire exit like he was going for a walk in the park. 

Daisy glared in his direction. Like hell was he getting away that easily. 

She pressed her palm to the floor and focused. A crack opened in the linoleum that zigzagged down the length of the hall and opened a hole right in front of Garrett’s feet. He skidded to stop before falling through it, unfortunately, but it gave Daisy a moment to get to her feet and knock the box out of his hands with a concentrated shockwave. 

Apparently, the electric shock from before was still working through Daisy’s body and the shockwave was a little less concentrated then intended and the files exploded all over the hallway. 

Garrett growled as he spun to face her, “Those were alphabetized!”

He raised his arm gun again and fired a series of smaller blasts. Daisy was expecting them this time and dodged them while she sprinted down the hall. Her powers were great, but sometimes a little hand-to-hand was therapeutic. 

Daisy jumped into the air and pushed some quake energy behind her fist that she threw into Garrett’s face. 

He stumbled back with the force of her blow. That was a new trick she had taught herself. She was definitely using that one again. 

While he was disoriented, she kicked at his good knee. He faltered, but managed to raise his mechanical arm to block Daisy’s next punch. She tried another angle, which he also blocked. 

Daisy managed to land a few small hits, but nothing slowed him down much and she knew from experience that he could hold out much longer in a physical fight than she could. Unless she managed to land a few more lucky hits, this could go on for some time. Since half of his limbs and organs were mechanical, he could keep blocking her punches for hours until she was too worn out to defend herself. 

She was already getting tired and sloppy. She left herself open on the left for a fraction of a second and Garrett took the opportunity to throw his weight behind a punch with his mechanical arm.

A gasp forced its way out of Daisy’s throat at the force and she skidded back a few feet. She was pretty sure she felt her heart stutter for a moment from that. It’d probably be a good idea to avoid getting hit like that again. 

Garrett raised his arm. Daisy could see the glow from it growing brighter and he seemed to be charging a bigger electric blast. 

Definitely want to avoid getting hit with that. 

Daisy had just enough time to throw her hands out in front of her and push out an equally powerful shield of vibrations. The two forces collided and Daisy was suddenly flying again. 

This wasn’t the fun kind of flying, like when she navigated the city. No, this was the 'rocketing backwards through nothingness and hoping you don’t end up impaled on a flagpole' type of flying. She was grateful for the first lesson May taught her, though: how to take a fall. May had said, 'you only give yourself whiplash once,' and she was not lying. This probably wasn’t the type of falling she had in mind though. 

Daisy’s back finally collided with something hard and sharp (not flagpole sharp, thankfully, but it wasn’t comfortable). The force knocked the wind out of her with a wheeze, but she was tucked in such a tight ball, she didn’t crack her head open at least. 

She was only still for a moment, before she started falling in a different direction. 

Even in her rattled state, Daisy could tell she was heading for the ground. She flung out her hands and quaked down in an attempt to cushion her fall. It was shakier than her usual landings, but she didn’t hit the ground at terminal velocity, anyway. 

She crumpled to the ground, cold concrete pressed into her face, and tried to take stock of her injuries. Everything ached for the moment, so it was hard to get a good reading. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright. She couldn’t lay on the sidewalk all night. 

She instantly regretted it. The thing she had crashed into was the skyscraper across the road from the laboratory. The slight shift in her posture told her she definitely had some glass shards piercing her back. That was nothing compared to the damage to the lab. 

She could tell from the outside which floor she and Garrett had been on. It looked like it had been hit with a bomb. The window Daisy had ben blasted out of was the epicenter of a massive circle of blown windows and bent scraps of metal, which were probably once the building’s supports, jutted out at all angles. 

Daisy could see from the ground the exposed wiring sending sparks into the black hole that was once a level of the building. Papers and other bits of singed shrapnel drifted through down onto the road, where some spectators had started to gather to gasp at the destruction. 

Daisy noticed some of them were wearing lab coats or security uniforms, so it seemed the building had already been evacuated. That was the standard procedure whenever the Big Three were involved; getting in their way only led to normal people getting hurt. 

Daisy saw a streak of blue dart from behind the building. She thought she was hallucinating for a moment, until she heard the helicopter fly overhead and could clearly see the glow from Garrett’s cybernetics coming from it. 

She raised a hand, ready to quake it out of the sky, but stopped herself. They had caused enough damage tonight. There would be another chance to take them down, and it’s not like they had gotten what they wanted anyway. 

Daisy pushed herself to her feet and hoped she could shuffle away from here without drawing any attention. 

“Look! It’s Quake!” a voice shouted. 

No such luck there. 

The crowd of spectators and news reporters quickly turned their attention from the destroyed building and converged on Daisy, the notorious Quake. 

Well, time to leave. 

Daisy spared a second to make sure no one was close enough to get caught in the blast and shot into the air as high as she could manage. As soon as her feet left the ground, all of her injuries made themselves known, but she kept pushing higher. Once out of sight of the cameras, she could land wherever and make her way home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After taking the longest way home possible and a pit stop to change into normal clothes, Daisy limped into her tiny apartment and threw the bag containing her tact suit in a corner. Even that stray movement stung. 

Daisy shuffled into her bathroom and started to fill the tub up with cold water. She grabbed a bottle of pain killers from the medicine cabinet and shook out a small handful and swallowed them dry. She pulled off her shirt, which was already starting to show small pinpricks of red along her back. Good thing she didn’t like this shirt much. 

With a tweezers and heavily gritted teeth, Daisy started painstakingly picking the pieces of glass out of her back. Luckily, most of them had gotten pulled out when she changed out of her suit, but a few stubborn ones were still in there. Once she was satisfied she got as many as she could, she headed into the living room, grabbed her tiny TV and slid it into the bathroom. 

She perched it in its usual place on the toilet and dumped the contents of her fridge’s ice maker into the now full tub. It wasn’t the best treatment, but it was the best she could do at the moment. 

She made sure she had a warm, fluffy towel next to the tub, flicked the news on the TV, stripped the rest of the way and lowered herself into the icy tub. 

Every second of gradually sliding into the cold water was torture. Not only was her body rejecting the sudden temperature change, but her exhausted muscles aggressively complained at the load of her body weight being put on them. Daisy hissed the entire way down and let out a sigh once she was fully submerged. 

Now that that particular torture was done, it was time for the next one: watching the news. She dried off her hand and turned up the volume on the TV. 

“—reporting from the SciTech building, where a reported break-in prompted the evacuation of all staff earlier tonight. Shortly after everyone was out of the building, an alleged explosion rocked the entire block, causing substantial damage to the building. Witnesses report seeing Quake, the known vigilante, fleeing the scene shortly after the explosion—”

“Really? No one saw the half-robot, glowing madman 'fleeing' the scene?” Daisy grumbled at the TV. 

“—No word yet on what motive Quake may have had for the break-in or the explosion—”

Daisy gaped at the TV. “Excuse me?”

She angrily flicked over to the next station. This channel had its anchors and a guest speaker gathered around a table in the studio instead of in the field. Daisy recognized the guest as the grumpy old army general who every news station dragged in to trash talk Daisy. He was very vocal about not being a Daisy fan, even though they had worked together at S.H.I.E.L.D. before. 

“—have to wonder, why is no action being taken? Quake is a dangerous criminal capable of causing millions of dollars in damage at a whim. Best case, there should be a nationwide manhunt to root her out and, at the very least, an armed sniper on every rooftop in the city—” General Talbot said.

“Now, isn’t that a little extreme? Quake is the one who has been impeding the actions of the super villain trio for months. Don’t we owe her a little credit for that, even if her methods are a little messy?” the anchor replied. Daisy would thank him if she didn’t know for a fact that he was only playing devil’s advocate. He had frequently said similar things as Talbot online and only defended her when the network wanted to get Talbot incensed. 

“She’s a vigilante!” Talbot shouted, pounding on the table. 

And there he goes. 

Talbot continued to rant. “Stopping supervillains is what the police are supposed to do, which they can’t do if we have another superpowered lawbreaker flying in and bringing down buildings on their heads. If Quake would stay out of it for once, law enforcement could do their jobs—”

Daisy scowled and clicked to the next channel. As if the police has any chance of going up against Garrett and Raina. Quinn they could probably handle, but he typically stayed in the helicopter and looked smug. 

The reporter on the next channel tended to be a bit more on Daisy’s side, so Daisy was looking forward to what she had to say. The banner at the bottom of the screen read _Quake: Savior or Menace?_ which was not wholly encouraging. 

“—the most recent incident at the SciTech laboratory damaged not only a multimillion dollar facility, but also destroyed thousands of irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind research documents. This leads us to ask, how should Quake be held accountable, when she is finally apprehended?”

Daisy groaned and slid deeper into the icy water. Quake was going to have to lie low for awhile to recover from this. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few months had passed since the incident at the lab. Daisy refused to listen to the police scanners at night, or she would just want to suit up and jump into action. 

She knew better, though. She had to lay low for awhile until people forgot about her mistakes and only remembered the fact that she had saved their asses multiple times. Granted, this most recent one was a pretty large and expensive mistake to forget. 

At least now she had the free time to sleep at night. Not that she was actually sleeping, since every siren that drove by her window made her wonder what destruction her city was being subjected to now. 

Watching the news was a nightly struggle. Raina, Garrett, and Quinn were running rampant around the city in her absence. Daisy had lost count of the amount of break-ins they had committed in a few short months. Shortly after each, they would debut a new weapon or machine on the next excursion. 

The cops were already scrambling to do what they could and every time the police chief was interviewed, he looked more and more exhausted. Daisy had started pausing on his close ups and counting the gray hairs in his mustache, since it seemed like there were more every day. The spiteful part of Daisy wanted to watch the city fall into chaos without her to keep the trio in check.

The rational part of Daisy, however, was itching to suit up and quake them all into next week. 

She couldn’t sit around doing nothing, so she went back to what she did before she got her powers: she hacked. 

The minute Daisy got off work, she turned on the news in the background, sat down at her computer with a coffee beside her, and tapped away at her computer. She spent hours trawling through the deep web, looking for any kind of trail she could latch onto. She found the trio’s home addresses, high school yearbook photos, office hours at the university. Everything except something she could use. 

Her coffee would eventually get cold, sitting beside her untouched. Daisy thought she had a breakthrough when she hacked her way into the university’s security footage, but there were strategic blindspots in their offices and around some of the lesser used exits. At least Daisy knew where they were sneaking out now. 

Not that it helped. As much as Daisy wanted to barge into Raina’s office and smash her stupid face into her desk, she couldn’t risk it. The trio didn’t know her real name or secret identity, and she’d like to keep it that way. Raina always seemed to know more about Daisy’s past than she let on, but if she knew who Daisy really was, she would have definitely leaked it to the press by now. 

Daisy sighed. After weeks, she hadn’t found the paper trail she was hoping for that would show the trio’s shady bank history. She closed out of the windows full of code and just opened up the university’s website. 

It was a nice school. Daisy almost would have considered enrolling if she wasn’t hiding out from a secret spy organization she used to work for. And if the school wasn’t run by three super villains who wanted her dead. 

Daisy clicked through the website until she found each of their department’s home pages. The first thing that popped up was an article about how they had just signed on a new graduate student and the entire article was spent languishing about how great the trio was and how generous and blah blah blah. The poor student, who was studying some plant crap, was mentioned for about two lines before being overshadowed by her saintly advisors. 

Daisy clicked through each of the trio’s academic profiles, though they wouldn’t tell her anything new. She scowled at their smug faces on their headshots the whole time. 

One of the alarms on her phone went off and Daisy instinctually checked which one it was. 

It was a building near the university. The signal beeped just long enough for Daisy to see that all the exits were reading as compromised before they all shut off. 

Daisy frowned. That was weird. 

She opened up another browser and quickly hacked into the live satellite feed of the area. She quickly saw why the alarms had stopped going off. 

The building that was standing moments before was now a pile of rubble. Even on the zoomed out view from the satellite, Daisy could see the blue glow of Garrett’s cybernetic limbs and a helicopter parked nearby. There was some giant metal contraption that Garrett was standing beside, but Daisy couldn’t tell what it was. It appeared to be moving towards another building though. 

Daisy gritted her teeth and glanced toward her closet, where her tactical suit was safely stored. She knew she shouldn’t go out in the field yet. Especially when there was a giant building-leveling machine at play, that she could easily be blamed for. 

She couldn’t just sit around while they destroyed a whole neighborhood. 

Daisy shot off the couch and towards the closet. Within moments, she was suited up and rocketing out the window. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The wind whistled through Daisy’s hair as she tried to made as stealthy a landing as possible. She touched down a few blocks from the collapsed building the trio was near last and jogged closer through the alleys. 

As she got closer, she could hear them bickering back and forth, but she was still too far to hear what they were saying. She edged closer, sticking to the shadows. 

“—just supposed to be a test. Now that we know it works, we need to pack it up and hide it before we get noticed,” Daisy heard Raina hiss. 

“Come on, we’ve been working on this baby for months,” Garrett protested. “Let me play with it a bit longer.”

Daisy peeked around the corner. Raina was in her black crime-committing attire, but otherwise looked completely normal; no thorns, just hair and skin. Garrett was sporting his high-tech limbs, as usual, and Quinn just looked like he made a wrong turn on his way to a masquerade fundraising gala. 

Raina’s crossed arms and impatiently tapping foot made Daisy think she was lucky to get here when she did. Any later and the trio might have already been gone and left a huge mess for Daisy to explain to the authorities. 

Daisy slipped her phone out of her pocket and opened up the camera. This could be her one chance to catch them in the act. All she needed was one picture to send to the press and the secret would be out. 

And in her haste to snap the picture she forgot to turn off the shutter sound on her phone. That one tiny click was all it took to silence the trio. 

Daisy ducked back behind the wall before they could see her, but she knew it was too late. 

“It appears your 'playing' has already attracted some unwanted attention,” Raina drawled. 

Daisy launched herself into the air, anticipating their next move. She was clear from the building a split second before Garrett blasted a hole through it. Her phone slipped out of her hand and she grappled to save it while keeping herself airborne. 

“No no no!” Daisy cursed. She watched the phone tumble to the ground and saw the pieces shatter in a thousand directions when it hit. Great. Not only was that her evidence to get the trio locked up, it was also going to take about a week to get all her tracking apps reprogrammed onto a new one. 

Not to mention, she couldn’t afford a new phone _and_ rent this month. Fantastic. 

Daisy lowered herself to the ground where the trio was waiting. The massive machine they were 'playing' with whirred lowly behind them. Garrett noticed Daisy’s attention to the machine, squared up in front of it, and pointed his gun arm at her.

“No!” Raina interjected. “You and Quinn get the machine out of here before anything happens to it. I’ll take care of Quake.”

In the few moments that Daisy wasn’t paying attention to Raina, she had shifted so her entire body was covered in thorns and Daisy could see her golden eyes glinting in the darkness. 

Garrett looked about to argue, but he growled and turned his attention to the machine. Quinn turned on his heel and took off, likely to get the helicopter. 

“Yeah, you’re not getting away that easy,” Daisy mumbled. She raised and hand to quake the machine into tiny pieces. 

Before she could, she had to dodge a clawed swipe at her face. 

Raina had a snarl fixed on her face as she flung herself repeatedly at Daisy. Daisy managed to knock her away enough to not get her face sliced open, but she didn’t have a moment to breathe or stop Quinn and Garrett from leaving, which was probably Raina’s exact intention. 

Instead of just deflecting Raina’s next attack, she grabbed Raina’s arm and landed a kick to her gut. 

That ought to get her off Daisy’s butt for a minute. 

Daisy heard the thwip of the helicopter blades hovering overhead and saw Garrett fastening the machine to a rope dangling from it. She flung out her hand again. 

And Raina was back. 

She threw herself directly in Daisy’s line of vision and aimed her claws at Daisy’s eyes. Daisy barely had the time to lean back and avoid the swing. She could feel the very tips of Raina’s fingers brush across the bridge of her nose, just barely far enough to avoid getting cut. 

Daisy stumbled from the sudden change in her center of gravity. Just in time to see Garrett standing on top of the machine, holding onto the rope it was dangling from, while Quinn piloted the helicopter up into the black sky. 

Raina’s smug face made it even worse. 

Daisy could feel the rumble building beneath her feet and spreading into the earth around her. This had to be the worst possible comeback tour ever. 

And she was pissed. 

She drew up the vibrations from her feet and pushed them into her hands which she blasted full force into Raina with a growl. 

Raina flew backwards into a nearby building. The force of the shockwave Daisy threw at her was enough to blast the brick wall inwards with Raina in it. Daisy knew from experience that Raina was annoyingly durable, though. She darted into the building, clambering up the pile of bricks and drywall to get in.  

It appeared to be some sort of lab, based on all beakers lying around, so this was definitely on the university’s campus. Hopefully, Daisy would be able to get Raina out of here with minimally more damage, since it would only mess with the students to have their space wrecked. 

Raina was already dusting herself off when Daisy mounted the rubble. 

“That’s going to be expensive to fix,” Raina grumbled. 

Daisy scoffed. Now, Raina was concerned about the destruction of property. The millions of dollars in property damage downtown meant nothing, but when it was the university…

“Why is that your problem? It’s not like you have a personal investment here, right?” she shouted back sarcastically. 

“It’s always my problem when the education of young people is at risk,” Raina quipped. She didn’t give Daisy another chance to return the banter before launching herself at Daisy. 

Daisy blocked and threw a few hits of her own. If there was one thing she had missed during her forced vacation it was getting to burn off some steam by beating the crap out of one of these jerks. 

She didn’t hold back. She threw her full strength into each punch or kick, determined to do as much damage to Raina’s smug face as possible. 

When she had an opening, Daisy threw out a hand and quaked Raina hard enough to send her flying over a table and scaled down the rubble pile. 

She lost sight of Raina for a moment on the other side of the table, which was never a good thing. Sure enough, Raina popped up after a few moments holding a hose that was cut through. Daisy wasn’t sure what the point of it was, until she smelled gas. 

“Sorry, Quakey, but today is not a day that you win,” Raina drawled and nodded towards the back of the lab. 

Ignoring that disgusting nickname, Daisy followed her eyes towards the rest of the (what she thought was) empty lab. 

There was a girl by one of the tables, wide-eyed, and standing protectively in front of some plant. What was she doing here? Why didn’t she run?! The one thing Daisy would never forgive herself for was civilian casualties, and Raina knew that. 

And Raina had a broken gas line and what was probably some form of lighter in her hand.

“NO!” Daisy shouted. 

The second she saw Raina’s hand twitch, she threw out a hand and sent a shockwave in the direction of the girl. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it was better than getting blown up in a gas explosion. She threw another shockwave in Raina’s direction hoping to contain the explosion or direct it as far away from herself and other people as she could. 

The explosion was deafening. Everything went silent after the initial boom and Daisy was going to have some definite hearing damage. All Daisy saw was a mass of fire and burning building material. She was flung backwards into the opposite wall and was pretty sure she blacked out for a moment. 

When she came to, all she could hear was ringing. Dust (or smoke, it was hard to tell) filled the air, obscuring any remaining features of the lab. Daisy coughed some of the dust out of her lungs, but she could feel them burning with every inhale. 

Speaking of burning, the one thing she could see through the smoke was fire.  Flames burned in small patches of whatever they could grab onto and sucked the rest of the oxygen out of the air. 

Raina had clearly made her escape already and left Daisy to deal with the consequences. The ringing in her ears abated slightly and Daisy could hear the shrill wailing of firetruck sirens in the distance. She needed to get out of here before she was found.

She maneuvered her arms under herself and pushed herself up. God, _everything_ hurt. The movement forced another coughing fit from her lungs. 

Distantly, she heard another cough. Shit, the girl. 

Daisy forced her own pain out of her mind and struggled to her feet. She wobbled around the piles of destroyed lab materials and leaned on whatever she could for support until she reached the back of the lab. 

A boy had appeared in the lab too and was shaking the girl’s unconscious form and shouting her name. He clearly had better cover than the girl did from the explosion, but still had some cuts and scrapes up his arms. 

The girl looked considerably worse for wear. There was a gash on head and cuts all up her arms from flying bits of the lab. The potted plant she had been so desperately protecting was crushed beneath her and there was so much blood on and around her. Daisy was never squeamish about blood, but usually it was her own or whatever poor bastard she was beating up that day. 

Never was it from an innocent bystander. Daisy felt sick. 

The girl opened her eyes slightly and groaned. Thank god, she was still alive. The slight movement brought Daisy back to the present. 

“What can I do?” She offered. She was pretty well practiced at bandaging herself up in the field by now. “I can help—”

“You’ve done enough, thanks,” the man snapped before returning his attention to the girl. 

That stung. That tone brought back the memories of when she first got her powers and blew out the windows in the base. She tried to help the team sweep up the glass, but everyone of them sent her away with the same words. 

_You’ve done enough._

She was just trying to help. 

Daisy heard the calls of the first responders kicking through the wreckage. It would be best if they didn’t find her here. 

She turned and stumbled over the piles of rubble until she found a flat spot and launched herself into the air. 

She didn’t make it very far. Every system in her body protested the strain of making herself fly through the air. As gently as she could, she set herself down on a rooftop. 

She took a breather and tried again, this time only making it across one more rooftop. The more she pushed, the lower she flew with each launch. After awhile, she could barely get her feet off the ground. 

She collapsed onto the rooftop, the dust still clinging to her lungs and the pure exhaustion dragging her into unconsciousness. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Daisy finally woke up she almost wished she was dead. Everything that hurt last night hurt a thousand times worse now. It didn’t help that she spent roughly half a day curled up in the same position with her arm pinned under her body.

She groaned and moved slowly, trying to gradually stretch out her muscles.

The sun was up, but it was sinking lower in the sky already, so Daisy had some time to kill before she could make her way home. 

Once it was fully dark, she started on the slow, agonizing trek home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy’s attempt to gracefully lower herself through her window ended with her knees buckling and her collapsing on the floor with a wheeze. She quickly stripped off her tact suit and flung it into a random corner. Normally, she would be more concerned about if someone stopped by and saw it on the floor, but frankly she could not give less of a crap about it. 

Her typical ice bath to sooth her muscles was far too much effort. She grabbed her always-handy bottle of painkillers, threw a handful in her mouth, chased them with an entire bottle of water, and then collapsed on her couch and fell asleep. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In retrospect, Daisy probably should have checked her messages before passing out for another 12 hours, but she didn’t. There were a lot of things she probably should have done. 

Like go to work. 

When she finally dragged herself off the couch, there was a dozen emails from her manager as well as 20 missed calls on her apartment’s landline. Great, so she was definitely fired. She quickly called the number of the store.

The phone rang once and her manager picked it up with a cheery voice until Daisy said her name. 

“Daisy? What the hell? I called you a hundred times about missing your shift today—”

“I know, I’m sorry.” her voice came out raspy and cracked. “I got a really bad bout of the flu and have basically been unconscious, delirious, or barfing for the last 24 hours,” Daisy lied effortlessly. “Also, I lost my cell phone.”

“Oh my god, are you alright? Did you go to the doctor?” he asked, worry lacing his tone. 

Daisy smiled. Sometimes her manager was a hard-ass, but he did genuinely care about his employees. Well, the ones who actually gave a crap about their job anyway. 

“No, I didn’t want to spread my germs to the rest of the world. I’m sure it’s almost passed anyway,” Daisy replied. 

“Are you taking care of yourself at least? Drinking lots of fluids?”

Daisy glanced at the single empty water bottle that was the only thing she ingested for the last 24 hours. “Yeah, of course.”

“Well, I hope you feel better soon. I got Miles to take your shift today, so I’ll see if he can cover you for the next few days, too. Just to be safe.”

“Tell him I owe him one,” Daisy said and hung up. 

She glanced at the TV remote laying on the table. Did she really want to pick it up and watch the news? She already knew what it would be saying. 

_Dangerous Vigilante Destroys University Building, Kills Innocent Student._

Daisy winced. She was really hoping that the girl from the lab pulled through. She looked alive when Daisy left, but that didn’t mean much. All Daisy could think about was how much blood there was. 

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of puppies and beaches or anything to get that image out of her head. 

She reached for her laptop, but then realized the news would probably be all over any site she went as well. 

In the end, she grabbed a book and retreated to her bedroom. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy gave it a week before she could bear looking up any information about that night. As expected, none of the headlines were very flattering for her. 

_Student Injured As Quake Levels University Building. Why Did Quake Attack Science Building? Does Quake Hate Science? Manhunt Intensifies for Quake. Directors of Graduate Studies Publicly Denounce Vigilante Quake._

No one even acknowledged the presence of Raina at the scene. Daisy scrolled through as many articles as she could manage. There was no mention of a student dying, so she had to be alive, right? If she didn’t survive, the news would be all over it. 

Sadly, there was no mention of her condition or a name of the hospital where she was taken. 

Daisy frowned and started hacking. She considered just calling around to the hospitals in the area, but given the high profile nature of the accident, she doubted the receptionist would be willing to reveal anything.

She trawled through the admission records of that night, looking for anyone in the right age group, from the area of the university, anything listed as 'explosion' or 'accident.' Nothing. 

She took off all her filters and scoured all the records. There were a lot of old people admitted and some teenagers with sprained wrists or ankles, but no one that could fit the description of the girl. 

After hours of nothing, she gave up. Hopefully the news would be annoying enough that they’d track the girl down for an interview when she was recovered. 

An alarm beeped on her new phone. The trio had been unusually quiet for awhile now. She opened up the notification and frowned. 

It was from a bank downtown. The back door had been opened, which no one used, except for deliveries. What the hell? Since when did they go for such obvious targets as a bank? They already had more money than they knew what to do with from Quinn. 

Daisy briefly debated ignoring it and going to sleep, but she had a nagging sensation that there was probably something more valuable than cash in the vaults. 

She groaned and shuffled to her closet where she stashed her suit. It still had a fine layer of dust on most of it from the lab that Daisy had never bothered to clean off. She brushed the majority of it off with her hands and suited up, grumbling the whole time. At least since it was a stealthy breach and not a massive hole in the wall she knew it was Raina and not Garrett. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Daisy landed at the back of the bank where Raina broke in. The only thing to indicate that anybody had gone in this door was the tiny burn marks around the lock that must have disabled it. 

She slipped through the door and closed it behind her. 

“Now if I was a pain-in-the-ass super villain, where would I go?” Daisy mused. 

She slipped out her phone and opened up the motion sensor monitor for the building. Nothing was tripped except the entrance she had just come through. 

She pressed her palms into the floor, closed her eyes, and slowed her breathing. She zeroed in on all the vibrations she could feel throughout the block.

She felt the two security guards on duty pacing around the reception desk two floors above her. Really earning that paycheck, boys. Then, the floor below, she noticed movement in one of the vaults. Raina was quickly moving around the vault, and Daisy could feel the very slight vibrations as each safe deposit box popped open. One thing that was odd was that her heart rate was usually high. Must be an important job.

To minimize damage, Daisy decided to take the stairs to the next level. She shuffled down the hallway until she found the vault where she felt Raina. She had never had to stop a bank heist before, so she mentally crossed that off her bucket list. The giant metal vault door looked just like the ones from the movies. Eight feet tall, with a giant crank wheel on the front and a rather intense looking combination lock. 

Daisy felt like she was breaking into Gringotts. 

The vault door was still sealed, so Raina must have gotten in another way. Unfortunately, Daisy didn’t have time to find that way. 

She held out a hand and prayed to Lady Justice that this would be the time she could get Raina arrested and not have people try to charge her for the cost of a bank vault door. 

Slowly, she rattled apart the gears inside. Hopefully, if she took her time, she wouldn’t permanently damage it. If she had the time she would just try to spin them until she unlocked it, but she doubted Raina would stick around that long. 

The hinges finally gave way and Daisy gave one final push to knock the door inwards. It groaned and crashed into the ground sending a puff of dirt shooting out in all directions. That probably meant the concrete floor was crushed. Whoops. 

She stepped over the door and tried to wave some of the dirt out of her face. Hopefully she could get this over with quickly. She was freaking tired. 

“Really, Raina, I thought you were beyond bank robbing. I always thought it was too cliché for—” she started. 

But the bank robber her eyes landed on was definitely not Raina. 

She looked younger. Maybe around Daisy’s own age. She was wearing an outfit made up of various shades of green that seemed like it had been pieced together from thrift shop finds. Her light brown hair hung loose over her shoulder and she had a cheap-looking mask that appeared to be cut out of a piece of scrap fabric tied across her wide eyes. The girl stood there, stuffing a massive diamond in a bag and looking like a deer in the headlights.

The only thing that made her seem less like a bad cosplayer was the tangled plant sticking out of her back with the vines swaying gently. 

“You’re not Raina,” Daisy said, dumbly. 

“No, I’m…I’m new,” the girl responded. 

' _I’m new?'_ Was she getting introduced to a coworker? This girl was _obviously_ new to this supervillain thing and didn’t really look too into it. 

“Um…okay. Your first act as a bad guy is to rob a diamond from a bank? Are you guys given a Bingo card at Supervillain Orientation or something?” Daisy taunted. 

The girl stuck her hands awkwardly on her hips and scoffed. “No! There’s no…um—It’s…” she stammered. 

Daisy snorted a laugh. This plant lady was _really_ new to this. She was much more fun than fighting Raina again. She took a step forward to reason with the woman and the woman took a step back. Oh, and she was terrified of 'Quake' already. Good. 

“Look, you obviously are new at this and probably don’t really want to be doing this, so I’m going to let you off with a warning this time,” Daisy offered. “I’ll close my eyes for exactly a minute and all you need to do is put the diamond in my hand and walk out the door. I won’t look where you go and I might even tell the security guards you beat me. Maybe it’ll boost your street cred or something.”

Okay, the part about telling the guards was a definite lie. Daisy was not planning on sticking around that long, but hopefully this would convince the girl to give up this supervillain thing before she actually started. 

Daisy held her hand out in front of her. “If you do try to leave with the diamond, I will stop you, though. Just saying,” Daisy said. She wiggled her toes and zeroed in on the vibrations from the floor. She would be able to feel if the plant lady made a break for the door or the hole in the ceiling that Daisy saw once the dust cleared.

“Alright, counting down,” Daisy announced and started counting to sixty seconds. 

Sure, it was probably dumb to leave her guard down so much in the presence of a new enemy. She had no idea what the plant lady was capable of and could probably just as easily strangle Daisy before she could do anything to stop it. 

But if nothing else, Daisy was a good judge of character and the look in the woman’s eyes said she wasn’t capable of murder. 

Daisy heard the woman rustling through her bag for the diamond. However, she got to twenty seconds and Daisy hadn't felt her move forward. 

“I was serious about the one minute thing, by the way,” Daisy informed.  

Daisy got to twenty-two when she felt something heavy crack her in the back of the head. 

The room spun and Daisy staggered and cursed loudly. She heard quick footsteps, but her senses were so knocked out of balance that she had no idea where the girl was heading. Maybe Daisy wasn’t such a great judge of character and the girl was coming to finish her off. 

Her world stabilized just in time for Daisy to hear the groan of the metal vault door being moved. 

She squinted and focused her eyes on the doorway where the girl had somehow lifted the vault door and lodged it back into place. She heard a whirring sound and the edge of the door glowed molten orange and seemed to be sealing itself. 

Daisy ran to it and pulled. Yep, that was sealed. She would just have to go out the hole in the ceiling. 

She positioned herself underneath it and was about to launch herself up when a gun was pointed at her face. 

“Freeze! You’re under arrest,” the security guard screamed. Hasty footsteps ran towards him and a small group of more security guards converged and pulled out their weapons. 

Nope, going out the vault door. 

She threw out a hand and quaked the door as hard as she could. The vibrations rippled out from where she directed them and spread into the walls, leaving small cracks in the surface and the door toppled outwards. 

Revealing a larger group of security guards and policemen, all with their weapons out. Guess that vault door hitting the ground was pretty loud. Great. 

Daisy put her hands on her head. She knew she was outnumbered and she knew fighting off all these guys in an enclosed space would only lead to someone getting hurt and Quake ending up more vilified. So she decided to play nice. 

“Hey, guys. I’m sure you get this a lot, but this is really not what it looks like,” Daisy said. 

“Shut up! On your knees,” one of the cops shouted. 

“Okay, rude.” Daisy glared, but obeyed. 

The troops advanced slowly and circled her. Then they all froze. They all seemed to be having some silent conversation with their eyes that Daisy could clearly read as, “No, _you_ handcuff her.”

“You guys know I’m not gonna bite you, right?” Daisy teased. 

They all jerked their guns a little higher when she spoke. Great, this could only end well. 

Finally, some rookie cop who looked about 12 seemed to be give the short straw and slowly shuffled towards Daisy with his handcuffs bared. 

Daisy held perfectly still, knowing the slightest twitch of a muscle could end up with her getting a dozen bullets to the head. The cop jerked her hands behind her back, clamped the cuffs on, and pulled her to her feet. Daisy immediately slipped a pin out of her sleeve and started picking the cuffs.

“Now that I’m 'restrained,' can I tell you why you’re all making a mistake?” Daisy tried. More jerking of guns. 

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. This isn’t my first rodeo,” Daisy interrupted. “I know that when I say something, it better be the truth. So when I tell you that I was here to stop a villain from robbing the place, you should listen to me.”

“Take her upstairs, boys,” one of the cops, who was clearly in charge and suddenly found his authority now Quake was in cuffs, said. Jokes on him, Daisy had already unlocked both of the cuffs. She held them in place to maintain the illusion that she was restrained. 

Two security guards stepped forward and grabbed and arm each and started dragging Daisy out the ruined door. She jerked an arm out of the one’s grasp and planted herself, only to have two more guards clamp on. 

“If you guys would just listen for a minute, I could point you in the direction of the person who _actually_ stole something,” Daisy protested. 

The officer in charge scoffed. “Is it the college professor? The disabled war hero? Or is it the charitable philanthropist this time?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Great, this guy was one of those dipshits who liked to ignore the truth. 

They dragged her to the front door, which was swarmed with even more cops. When Daisy saw the news crew outside, she dug in her heels.  She needed to get through to them quickly. 

“You guys really need to listen to me. There’s a new supervillain who you can probably catch running down the back streets if you just go look!” Daisy demanded. 

“Sure, so you have less people to stop you from escaping,” one of the guards said. 

 _Dude, I don’t need less of you here to kick all your asses. I’m just not the bad guy,_ Daisy thought.

“If you could pull your head out of your butt, you would listen to me,” Daisy practically shouted at them. They were nearly to the door and Daisy could see the cameras converging. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t me. There was some plant lady. I was there to stop her.”

“Quake, Quake!” the reporter shouted, holding up a microphone. Daisy rolled her eyes and ducked her head, so her hair was covering her face. She was sure she wasn't close enough for the camera to catch her face, but better safe than sorry. “Quake! Are you saying there’s a new villain in the city?”

Daisy resented the news for their portrayal of her, but at least they would report on what she said. Maybe they could help her publicize this new villain and help Daisy catch her. “Yes! Some lady with plants growing out of her broke in—”

She was cut off by one of the security guards shoving her shoulder and dragging her towards a waiting cop car. 

“Yeah, yeah, you can tell us all about the plant chick at the station,” he said.

Daisy glanced up and saw the black sky above her was completely clear. Now or never. 

“I don’t think so,” she muttered. She dropped the cuffs, twisted out of the grip of the guards, blasted them all backwards, and then rocketed into the sky. The wind rushed past her ears for only a few moments before she landed on the roof of the bank. Luckily, there were no helicopters out yet or her escape would be much more difficult. She launched herself in the air and skipped across the rooftops in the opposite direction of her apartment, just in case. 

Well, this night had gone great. Because the only thing Daisy wanted in life was to have another supervillain to fight.


End file.
